This time last year Joe Launchbury had started only eight Premiership games for Wasps. Even now he has yet to pass his driving test. His father used to be the bursar at Roedean girls' school, for heaven's sake. There will be gnarled old locks out there wondering if they have woken up in some parallel universe. If this is the hard-nosed future of English forward play, the game is clearly going soft.

As recently as 2009, Launchbury was also being told there was no future for him in the Harlequins academy. He was playing for Worthing and stacking shelves in Sainsbury's, trying to save up a few quid to go travelling. His near-vertical ascent since being spotted at Worthing by the former England prop Will Green has even taken his family by surprise. When his older sister Victoria left to live in Hong Kong her kid brother was simply trying to establish himself in the Wasps first team.

For Victoria, and others, his progress has, according to Launchbury, been hard to comprehend. "She's been shocked, as well as delighted for me. It's been crazy for her to look from the other side of the world and see what's happened. When she came back home for Christmas it was the first time she'd seen me play a professional rugby match," says the 21-year-old. "When I was at Worthing I thought I'd be going off to Bath University and maybe play a little bit of rugby. I had no idea I'd be here so quickly."

So where has this baby-faced, mobile assassin sprung from? The boilerhouse, as Bill McLaren loved to call it, is not normally home to many artistic types (Launchbury obtained an A in his art A-level). In fact he has been lurking in the shadows all the while, having been England's players' player of the tournament at the Under-20 World Cup in 2011. The biggest mistake people make is to expect Launchbury to resemble his hero, Martin Johnson. They are ignoring the blindingly obvious. Some players break the mould from day one and the Exeter-born Launchbury is one.

Take his cricket. Plenty of rugby players like to send down a few overs or whack a few on the village green during the off-season but have you ever heard of a second-row forward good enough to have wicketkeeping trials for Sussex? He even equalled the all-time record of 32 dismissals behind the stumps in one season as a schoolboy at Christ's Hospital (he was in the 1st XI for three and a half years).

He was a decent goalkeeper, too, which one or two former locks may dismiss as irrelevant until Scotland kick off and a soaring figure in white plucks the restart out of the air with fly-paper hands. "My cricket's been really helpful for catching above my head and reflex catching," Launchbury says. "My batting wasn't good enough – I just used to slog it around – but I loved my wicketkeeping."

It is also worth keeping an eye on Launchbury when Scotland have the ball. During the autumn, Wasps played at Saracens on a horribly cold day. The home team won but a pale-blue blur repeatedly caught the eye. Launchbury wore the No4 but played like a flanker, his mobility, power and work rate hard to miss.

The following week he came off the bench to win his first England cap against Fiji and should have started against Australia. In the end he had to wait until the South Africa and New Zealand games when England's forward efforts were transformed. The entire English management team spent Christmas pinching themselves with delight.

You suspect they already know they have unearthed a potential England captain. Launchbury's father, Steve, was in the Royal Marines for 27 years so there is some steel in the family genes. As well as being athletic, strong and swift, he is bright, too. He is doing an Open University degree in sports science. He is also patient and affable, to the point where you start to be reminded of John Eales. As every Australian knows, Eales was nicknamed "Nobody" because – tah-dah – nobody's perfect. The only thing Launchbury can't do is drive. "I'm going to start after the Six Nations but it's not really that high on the priority list," he says.

Nor is looking tough for the sake of it; he has been yellow-carded once in his career. "An interviewer the other day said to me: 'I think you need to get a lot nastier.' But expectations in the game are different now. As long as I do my job and fulfil my role for the team I don't have to be doing all the dark arts and the dirty things. At the end of the day discipline is so important, both in international and club rugby. If you find yourself in the sin-bin too often you're not going to get picked.

"I remember my first game for Worthing. I could hear a couple of opponents saying: 'Right, 19-year-old, let's see what he's made of.' I'm quite a quiet guy so I didn't give them much back. I just let them do it and then try to beat them with what I can do on the pitch. That's what I've always tried to do."

The big Scotland pack may also encounter a tougher obstacle than they imagine. "People talk about my age and whether I can mix it physically but I feel it's something I'm getting much better at," he says. "You can't go into any game not expecting it to be a physical battle, especially with all the history of the Six Nations."

An increasing number of team-mates and former players reckon he will be more than equal to whatever Scotland throw at him. "I think he's got a really big future," says his Wasps team-mate James Haskell. "I have a go at him for doing all the ball-carrying while I'm hitting all the rucks. He's a second row, it should be the other way around." At this rate the Lions may also take an interest. "No one's any different … you'd struggle to meet someone who didn't want to play for the Lions," Launchbury says.

If it does happen, even he will pinch himself. "When I watched the highlights of the New Zealand game, it felt strange seeing me out there playing. Two years ago I wouldn't even have dreamed it."

Old-timers can relax: modern English forward play is in the safest of hands.